Month: March 2024

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be continuing with the painting of the Cape May, New Jersey scene. The photo that I’m using (My own from a recent visit.) is seen directly below.

I’ll be using my usual acrylic paints on a 5×7 inch canvas panel.

When last seen the painting appeared as it does in the photo seen directly below.

Since that time I have continued to work on the painting.

I’ve now started to paint some amateurish foliage. Hopefully this will be better for next time.

The current state of the painting is seen in the photo directly below.

I’ll have more progress to show you next week. See you then.

Judge Scott McAfee of Fulton Superior Court, who is overseeing the massive RICO case against Trump and his Georgia election theft coconspirators, has kicked the lead prosecutor, Nathan Wade, off the case. Ironically, this may be the best possible ruling the Fulton County district attorney, Fani Willis, could have hoped for. It means that she is still in charge and that the case can go forward, and the prosecutor won’t be tainted by sharing her bed and paying for her vacations.

But that’s cold comfort for the rest of us. In his ruling, was scathing about Willis and Wade’s conduct, calling their affair a “tremendous lapse in judgment” and “unprofessional,” and arguing that their testimony had “an odor of mendacity.” McAfee was dismissive of the strongest charge, however, writing that there’s no evidence that Willis hired Wade for purposes of self-enrichment.

Still, there’s plenty of meat left on the bone for an appeal. It is a good possibility that this case is fatally put off until after the election, and it could get tossed down the road regardless of who wins in November. We can add to this that McAfee earlier tossed several counts related to urging state officials to violate their oaths of office. Those are pertinent to the issue where Donald Trump is most glaringly guilty in this case, the famous call he had with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, urging him to “find 11,780 votes’ to overturn Biden’s victory in the state.

The problem was in the vagueness of the charging document, so this is an error that can be pinned directly on Willis and her office. She could reconvene a grand jury to get the language right and press these charges again, but that’s more delay, delay, delay.

Perhaps someday the Georgia cases will bring a measure of justice, but by then other things will have probably have stolen the limelight.

I don’t expect much from the Stormy Daniels case. Even if found guilty, Trump doesn’t face any jail time, and the odds are decent he’ll get a hung jury. A conviction would be nice, but now the trial has been delayed another month at the least.

Manhattan prosecutors on Thursday said they are willing to delay Donald Trump’s trial on charges related to making hush-money payments for up to 30 days so they can review records newly obtained from federal authorities.

The request has the potential to delay the proceedings, which were to begin with jury selection on 25 March in New York and would be the first of the four criminal indictments against the former US president to go to trial.

The office of the district attorney, Alvin Bragg, told the court that they were open to the delay because they had received from federal prosecutors about 31,000 page of records, and expected more next week.

“Based on our initial review of yesterday’s production, those records appear to contain materials related to the subject matter of this case, including materials that the People requested from the [US attorney’s office (USAO)] more than a year ago and that the USAO previously declined to provide,” prosecutors wrote.

Trump’s lawyers have asked to either delay for 90 days or for the charges to be dropped against him, alleging violations of the discovery process, in which the defense and prosecution shares evidence with each other. Prosecutors have said a delay of that length is not necessary.

It doesn’t sound like there is anything here that would justify the case’s dismissal, but Trump might win a longer delay. Its a shame because this case was the only one on track to get started. Of course, it could backfire on Trump if the case is decided closer to the election and not in his favor.

But there’s really only case that I think might happen before the election which has the power to kill his prospects of winning the presidency again, and that is Jack Smith’s election interference case. The Supreme Court is doing everything they can to delay that case past the election. Why those Justices would want another term with Trump as president after that they’ve gotten from him everything he could ever give them, I do not know.

Trump is winning in Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin and Michigan. He’s winning the popular vote. Biden is winning nowhere. Biden is on a path to defeat. How do you feel about that?

Are you in denial? Are you questioning the polls? All of them which are all sending the same message? Do you think the pollsters are using bad samples?

I’ll tell you what. This isn’t a situation where things will change once voters get to know the candidates better. The electorate is very familiar with both these candidates. Hell, they’ve actually seem both in the office of the presidency, so they have a unique ability to do a side-by-side comparison. Right now, the voters want Donald Trump to be president and they don’t want Joe Biden to be president. That’s clear. It’s fairly narrow, but it’s uniform across all swing states and in the popular vote.

How is this possible considering everything we’ve seen and know about Trump both in and out of office?

I honestly do not know. It makes me not want to live, frankly. But Trump is beating everyone. He’s beating Fani Willis and the media, and the Democrats and the too-late Justice Department and their special prosecutor. It’s true that he’s taken a massive half-billion dollar financial hit, but who cares when you’re about to be the most powerful man on Earth again?

I can’t say Trump is really doing anything right other than escaping justice, but perhaps Biden is doing something wrong. I thought he State of the Union speech was really strong and encouraging, but he got no real bump out of it all. At least, it was smaller than average.

There’s really nothing that’s going to be left of this country if Trump is reelected. So, with the stakes as high as they can get, it’s probably best to ignore the polls as best you can and get to work trying to help Biden get votes. Whatever else you might think is a higher priority for you, your career, your daughter’s wedding, you’re wrong about that.

Trump has to lose. That comes before everything else.

Looking through the roll call on the U.S. House of Representatives’ vote to ban the immensely popular TikTok, I can’t find any real discernible pattern. Overall, the bill which is formally called the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, passed overwhelmingly 352-65, with one member voting “present” and 14 not voting at all.

Just among Democrats, the vote was 111-38 in favor of the bill. Here are some key markers:

Maxine Waters, who is the ranking member on the powerful Financial Services Committee, supported the ban. Pramila Jayapal, the leader of the Progressive Caucus opposed it. So did notable progressives Cori Bush, Jamaal Bowman, Summer Lee and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The Hispanic and Black caucuses definitely split on the issue, and institutional or establishment Democrats were not united. For example, Ways & Means ranking member Richard Neal of Massachusetts opposed the ban, as did House Democratic Whip Katherine Clark.

The effort here is aimed at forcing TikTok’s parent, Beijing-based ByteDance, to sell the social media company or face a ban on App Store sales in the United States. So, if you want the TikTok application, you might want to download it in the near future before that becomes impossible.

It’s not clear yet whether the bill has the votes to pass in the U.S. Senate. So far, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has been noncommittal about bringing the bill to the floor. He probably realizes that banning TikTok in an election year is not a great way to win the youth vote, but you’d think House Democrats would have the same concern.

Donald Trump, who tried to ban TikTok while he was in office, now opposes the ban. This is probably because he’s seeking financial support from hedge fund manager Jeff Yass who has a huge stake in TikTok. But it’s also just a shrewd political move. Trump lost the youth vote by a lot in 2020 and he needs to make inroads. What better way than to paint the Biden administration as a bunch of unhip old fogies and sticks-in-the-mud?

Not to mention that a lot of people now make serious money on TikTok, and they don’t want the audience clipped.

Now, I saw Matt Yglesias make his case against TikTok and parts of it were compelling. For example:

Here’s the analogy I like to use. It’s 1975 and a state-owned Soviet firm wants to buy CBS. What happens? Well, what happens is they wouldn’t be allowed to. The FCC would block it. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the US or its predecessors would block it. If they didn’t have the power, congress would write a new law. And even if it wasn’t CBS, if it was a chain of local TV affiliate stations, the outcome would be the same. There would be no detailed factual analysis or demand for gold standard evidence that a Soviet-owned television statement might do Moscow’s bidding or that television is capable of influencing public opinion. We’d reject the idea out of hand. And rightly so, because the downsides would be very clear, and the upside minimal.

That’s how the TikTok situation looks to me.

It’s easy to pick this reasoning apart, what with the abandonment of evidence as a standard. But on the other hand it’s clearly correct not only about what would have happened in 1975 but also about what should have happened and why. There was a lot of panic about the Soviet Union during the Cold War and much of it was unwarranted, but we had good reason not to let them own our television networks and stations. And on a basic level the same is true about the Chinese government. You can start with not letting China own critical infrastructure and then find the legal justification later.

But is TikTok critical infrastructure? Is the problem about protecting consumer privacy or about preventing foreign influence campaigns? China says we’re just getting our butts kicked in the commercial sphere and so now we’re trying to use hegemonic tools to regain market share.

I think that if this bill becomes law it will be tied up in court for quite some time, so I don’t really expect any near term effect other than the political fallout. I think anyone who is for the TikTok bill is going to wind up on the wrong side of the political argument in November.

Of course, I could be wrong. But a lot of effort will be required to make this a liability for Trump instead of for Biden.

 

Howdy!

Although I’ve been a bit underwhelmed by Jon Stewart’s return to The Daily Show, he does have his moments. He was in fine form this past Monday night:

I’ll see you all next week. Cheers.

A group of progressive-minded U.S. Senators is trying to convince the Biden administration to do more to force Israel to allow humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. The main idea is to use a provision of the Humanitarian Aid Corridor Act that specifies that any nation that stands in the way of America providing civilian aid cannot receive military aid. The allegation is that Israel is guilty of stymying American assistance to Gazans and therefore should get cut off.

The letter, written by Senators Sanders, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Jeff Merkley of Oregon, is signed by some of the Democratic Party’s most progressive members: Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Mazie K. Hirono of Hawaii, Peter Welch of Vermont, Tina Smith of Minnesota and Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico.

The cut-off wouldn’t be complete. For example, they’re not calling for a ban on defensive systems like the anti-missile Iron Dome that protects Israel from rocket fire. But Congress just passed a supplemental bill that provides $10 billion for offensive weapons for Israel, and this is a spigot that could be turned off.

This demand isn’t really inconsistent with what President Biden has stated himself in recent days.

Biden said a potential Israeli invasion of the Gaza city of Rafah, where more than 1.3 million Palestinians are sheltering, is “a red line” for him, but said he would not cut off weapons like the Iron Dome missile interceptors which protect the Israeli civilian populace from rocket attacks in the region.

And this is being signaled pretty strongly, for example, in the following Politico article:

President Joe Biden will consider conditioning military aid to Israel if the country moves forward with a large-scale invasion of Rafah, according to four U.S. officials with knowledge of internal administration thinking.

Biden’s openness to taking this step reflects the extreme strains in his relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has rejected subtler efforts by the Biden administration to rein in his conduct of the war with Hamas.

While Biden has not made any decision on limiting future weapons transfers, officials said that he very well might do so if Israel launches a new operation that further imperils Palestinian civilians.

“It’s something he’s definitely thought about,” said one of the officials, who like the others, was granted anonymity to speak freely.

So, we can really see the letter from the progressive senators as part of a coordinated pressure campaign on Israel rather than a pressure campaign on the administration. The intelligence community is also sending shots across Bibi’s bow.

“A new U.S. global intelligence assessment says that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hold on office ‘may be in jeopardy’ and suggests Israel will fail to achieve its aim in the Gaza war of completely eliminating Hamas,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“While challenges to Netanyahu’s continuation in power have been widely discussed since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, it appeared unusual for American spy agencies to offer their analysis of an allied leader’s political prospects in an unclassified document.”

For more that a month newspapers in Israel have been reporting that Biden privately refers to Netanyahu as “an asshole.” This is from March 10th in the Times of Israel:

There have been multiple reports in recent weeks that Biden is fed up with Netanyahu, including that he has referred to the prime minister as an “asshole” in private on multiple occasions.

Biden has expressed frustration to confidants, according to NBC News, over his “inability to persuade Israel to change its military tactics in Gaza.”

He has publicly denounced Netanyahu’s hard-right coalition and become increasingly public about his frustration with the Netanyahu government’s unwillingness to open more land crossings for critically needed aid to make its way into Gaza. In his State of the Union speech, he announced plans to build a temporary port on the Gaza coast to facilitate direct delivery of aid.

According to Politico, Netanyahu claimed the initiative to ship aid to Gaza via the sea as his idea and denied that people in Gaza were starving, as attested to by locals and relief organizations.

I’m sure Biden is not impressed to learn that Bibi is taking credit for the temporary port idea. Nor is he going to he happy with Netanyahu’s appearance before AIPAC in Washington DC on Tuesday where he said he will attack Rafah and doesn’t give a shit what any ally has to say about it.

“But let me be clear,” Netanyahu continues, “Israel will win this war, no matter what.”

Netanyahu says in order to do so, the IDF has to operate in Rafah, otherwise Hamas will “regroup, rearm, and reconquer Gaza.”

…He offers a broadside against Israel’s allies, telling them, “You cannot say you support Israel’s right to defend itself, and then oppose Israel when it exercises that right.”

“You cannot say you support Israel’s goal of destroying Hamas, and then oppose Israel when it takes the actions necessary to achieve that goal,” he goes on.

“You cannot say that you oppose Hamas’s strategy of using civilians as human shields, and then blame Israel for the civilian casualties that are the result of this Hamas strategy,” Netanyahu insists.

He says that they are holding Israel to a standard on civilian casualties that no other country is held to.

“None of these pressures will stop us,” he pledges.

In an oblique message to Biden, Netanyahu says that “the overwhelming majority of the American people stand with us. I know that the overwhelming majority of Congress stands with us.”

I’m not sure the political argument is persuasive to the Biden administration or the Biden campaign. It’s not unlikely that Biden will lose the election because of lost support from Muslim communities in Michigan and Minnesota, or just generally from younger voters who side with the Palestinians. But it’s not just about politics. It’s about good policy and doing what’s right.

I think Biden is going to have to make good on his threats with respect to Netanyahu. Military aid has to be cut off.

I’d like to wish my mother a happy 92nd Birthday. It’s also my nine-and-a-half year sobriety anniversary, which I wouldn’t ordinarily mention except Robert Downey Jr. won an Oscar on Sunday night for best supporting actor. He thanked his terrible childhood, his publicist, agent and stylist, and most importantly his lawyer Tom Hansen for all the time he spent “trying to get me insured and bailing me out of the hoosegow, thanks bro!”

People can laugh, but it’s actually not all that funny. Rather it is inspiring to see Downey persevere. I’m proud of him and all the people who helped him along the way. His performance in Oppenheimer was outstanding. Staying sober is even better.

Speaking of another performer, Donald Trump aggressively defamed E. Jean Carroll at a rally in Georgia over the weekend.

Sometimes it’s not good to be rich. I just posted a 91 million dollar bond. 91 million. On a fake story. Totally made up story. Think of it. 91 million. I could say things about what it would cost normally. 91 million. Based on false accusations made about me by a woman that I knew nothing about. Didn’t know. Never heard of. I know nothing about her. She wrote a book. She said things. And when I denied it I said, “It’s so crazy. It’s false.” I got sued for defamation. That’s where it starts… The woman didn’t even know when it happened. And she admitted on Anderson Cooper, she said, “I think it was sexy.” Can you believe this. 91 million.

The New York Times reports that Trump defamed Carroll again on Monday morning and that Carroll’s lawyer looks at every statement Trump makes about her client and could definitely sue him a third time for defamation.

As Trump noted, he came up with a 91 million bond so he can protect his assets while he appeals the defamation verdicts against him, but he’s gonna need a bond well north of the $464 million he owes to New York State from the business fraud case he lost, and he’s gonna need it by the end of March. Where is that money coming from?  We’re talking about half a billion dollars.

And let’s be clear about something. He’s going to lose these appeals and it won’t matter if he’s elected president. He’ll still owe all this money.

He’s basically a ruined man who is floating along on the current of his cult status. Let’s see if we can figure out who might want to float a half billion loan to keep Trump aloft.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said former President Trump would not give “a penny” to support Ukraine in its war against Russia after the two met at Trump’s Florida estate Mar-a-Lago last week.

Orbán told Hungarian news channel M1 that Trump wants peace in the Russian war against Ukraine, and the Hungarian leader said he backed his vision to achieve that.

“I don’t see any other person as determined and strong as Donald Trump,” Orbán told M1, saying Trump “will not give a single penny to the Ukrainian-Russian war, therefore the war will end.”

As the Church Lady would say, “Could it be………Putin?”

One of the best articles of the week came from Tyler Pager of the Washington Post who wrote about how President Joe Biden relies heavily for advice on other politicians and is suspicious of staffers who never have to face the voters.

Also at the Washington Post, Anthony Faiola and Catarina Fernandes Martins take a look at how Europe’s youth are embracing fascism, with a special focus on Portugal. Portugal’s election is taking place Sunday.

Over at the New York Times, Kellen Browning has an excellent article on Kari Lake’s uneven attempts to mend fences with other Arizona Republicans as she seeks the nomination to replace departing Kyrsten Sinema in the Senate. It will make you want to visit Ruben Gallego’s campaign website.

Pakistan has a new prime minister, although he’s been prime minister before.

I definitely feel old realizing it’s the 16th anniversary of us all finding out that New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer was a connoisseur of high-end prostitutes.

It’s the 79th anniversary of the fire-bombing of Tokyo which killed about 100,000. That probably makes my parents feel old.

If we behave ourselves, we’ve got a billion more years, tops. I’m thinking more like 30-35 years.

Right, left and indifferent responses to Sen. Katie Britt’s bizarre State of the Union response speech. Also, SNL.

Obviously we do not want to feed Gaza forever, but a famine has arrived. Who wants to take responsibility?

What’s up with white, rural rage?

I had the thought that Sotomayor should consider retiring from the Supreme Court while a Democrat is still in a position to replace her, but it was just a thought. I’m still scarred from the RBG fiasco.

Meet the enemy.

What’s on your mind?

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be continuing with the painting of the Cape May, New Jersey scene. The photo that I’m using (My own from a recent visit.) is seen directly below.

I’ll be using my usual acrylic paints on a 5×7 inch canvas panel.

When last seen the painting appeared as it does in the photo seen directly below.

Since that time I have continued to work on the painting.

Not much progress this week but I did refine the fence a bit.

The current state of the painting is seen in the photo directly below.

I’ll have more progress to show you next week. See you then.6

The British system is weird, but the bottom line is that they have to have parliamentary elections no later than January 2025. That’s five years after the previous elections. In reality, though, no one wants to campaign over the Christmas holiday, so the elections will almost certainly be held before December. And there’s a thought that the U.S. and U.K. elections shouldn’t coincide because it’s a bit of an invitation for enemies to attack. The last time the two countries had leadership elections in close proximity was 1964. The American elections cannot be moved, so now it looks like the U.K. is going to have to hold elections in October.

The Tories are basically sitting on Death Row, so they’d like to delay as much as they can. At the moment, they’re in no condition to face the voters.

LONDON, March 4 (Reuters) – Support for the governing Conservative Party has fallen to the lowest level in more than four decades as a general election draws nearer in an opinion poll published on Monday, as another former minister announced he was quitting parliament.

An Ipsos poll put support for the Conservatives, in power for 14 years, at 20% at the end of February, down seven percentage points in a month, with the opposition Labour Party on 47%.

It was the lowest support Ipsos had recorded for the Conservatives since at least 1978, when it began regularly tracking support for the main parties.

The previous low was 22% in 1994, when John Major was Conservative prime minister, three years before the party suffered its heaviest electoral defeat in almost a century.

All of this seems entirely appropriate. The United Kingdom’s decision to Brexit has going predictably badly, and even as the American economy is going gangbusters, the Brits have fallen into a recession. The Conservatives’ solution? As always, tax cuts.

Finance Minister Jeremy Hunt said there were “signs the British economy is turning a corner” and “we must stick to the plan – cutting taxes on work and business to build a stronger economy”.

Media reports said Hunt was seeking to cut billions of pounds from public spending plans to fund pre-election tax cuts in his March 6 budget, if penned in by tight finances.

“This time last year, the prime minister pledged to get the economy growing but today’s data, showing a mild technical recession, shows a stark lack of progress,” said Pranesh Narayanan, research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research.

He added that chronic underinvestment in hospitals, schools and infrastructure “has created a crumbling public realm and a broken economy”, calling the figures “a wake-up call” that should push the government “to prioritise public investment rather than irresponsible tax cuts”.

They’re like leopards being led to their slaughter, wholly incapable of changing their spots.

The Labour Party’s additional good fortune is simply to be out of power at a time when it’s globally unpopular to have any power whatsoever. That’s not an advantage they can share with America’s Democratic Party. But I do feel better after watching Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech, which I rate as “excellent.”

https://twitter.com/VoteDarkBrandon/status/1765943575391412566?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet

I was a little worried when he took so long to take the stage, but once he got up there he was outstanding. I think he relieved a lot of stress and doubt about his fitness to wage this campaign. By the end of his speech, I was one fired up American! What did you think?